Clorox has apologized for a seemingly light-hearted tweet about Apple’s new emojis that some Twitter uses found racially insensitive.
Clorox posted the tweet Thursday after Apple said its new iOS update includes more racially diverse emojis, including faces with brown and black skin.
“New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach,” Clorox tweeted. The tweet showed a Clorox bottle that consisted of the new emojis.
The tweet generated an immediate firestorm on Twitter that had Clorox on the defensive, CNN Money reported.
“You need to clean up your PR person. Put some bleach on your distasteful marketing ideas,” @DriNicole tweeted, the magazine said. “Black emojis were added today. Saying this implies you’d rather the emojis be only white, by adding bleach.”
Clorox deleted the tweet and sent out another in the form of an apology:
“Wish we could bleach away our last tweet. Didn’t mean to offend—it was meant to be about all the (toilet, bathtub, red wine) emojis that could use a clean-up.”
Clorox also issued an apology in a press release.
“We apologize to the many people who thought our tweet about the new emojis was insensitive,” the company said. “It was never our intention to offend. We did not mean for this to be taken as a specific reference to the diversity emojis — but we should have been more aware of the news around this. The tweet was meant to be light-hearted but it fell flat.”
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
